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Hamas Loyalist Professor: Russell Rickford at the Cornell University “[October 7th] was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing.” by Sara Dogan

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-loyalist-professor-russell-rickford-at-the-cornell-university/

#3: Russell Rickford, Cornell University

Cornell associate professor of history Russell Rickford made national headlines for his enthusiastic and boisterous approbation of Hamas’s barbaric October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians during which over 1200 were maimed, mutilated, and slaughtered, and hundreds more taken hostage.

At a rally hosted by the ironically-named group, Jewish Voice for Peace, in Ithaca, New York on October 15, 2023, barely a week after Hamas’s attack, Rickford lauded Hamas in the highest terms and celebrated the outright slaughter of Israel’s Jews.
“What has Hamas done?,” Rickford asked. “Hamas has shifted the balance of power. Hamas has punctured the illusion of [Israeli] invincibility. That’s what they’ve done…Hamas has changed the terms of debate.”
Rickford continued extolling the virtues of the terrorist group, saying that “Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence” and that the Palestinians “were able to breathe for the first time in years” thanks to the bloody October 7th massacre.

“[I]t was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing! And if they [Palestinians] weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!” Rickford concluded, expressing sheer joy at the extent of Hamas’s slaughter.

Even in the highly anti-Semitic world of higher education, Rickford’s remarks praising the massacre were considered a step too far. The professor requested and was granted a leave of absence from the university but remained an employee and is still listed as a professor on the university’s website.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Kamala Loses One-Person CNN Debate Even the state media can’t cover for her anymore. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamala-loses-one-person-cnn-debate/

As we enter the final stretch of election season, every day seems to bring another Trump/Vance victory in spite of a hostile media, and another embarrassing loss by the Harris/Walz campaign. Recently, for example, Trump endeared himself to regular Americans by putting on an apron and working the McDonald’s drive-thru; conversely, McDonald’s dealt a fatal blow to Kamala’s claim she had worked for them as a teenager by releasing a statement declaring they could find no evidence of that. She is looking more and more like the most hapless, brainless, inauthentic, unqualified presidential nominee in modern history, if not ever. Even the state media like CNN can’t cover for her anymore, as evidenced by the tepid assessments of CNN commentators in the wake of Kamala’s recent CNN town hall hosted by Anderson Cooper.

To recap: when the Democrats realized that Joe Biden could no longer be propped up as their 2024 candidate, they found themselves painted into a corner. The Democrat kingmakers – Barack Obama, Susan Rice, and Valerie Jarrett – needed to step in and depose the decrepit Biden but didn’t want to fall back on Vice President Harris, whom they knew was devoid of accomplishments, likeability, brains, and presidential charisma, but how could they not go with her? Running the vice president as the nominee would ordinarily be the obvious move; leap-frogging over Kamala and selecting someone else would be a clear acknowledgement that she had never been anything but a diversity hire. And how could the party of identity politics not go with a “woman of color”? It would discredit their entire ideology.

So they rolled the dice and installed Kamala, knowing she was not ready for prime time but counting on a supportive media and a strategy of painting Trump as Hitler 2.0 to get her over the finish line. But in the ensuing months she has not only not risen to the occasion, she and her campaign are flailing to such an extent that all they have left is to fear-monger hysterically about Trump as A Threat to Democracy™.

Then came CNN’s Wednesday evening town hall in Philadelphia. David Urban nailed it when he declared afterward that she lost a one-person debate. A couple of examples of her prevaricating and fumbling will suffice to give a sense of just how badly the event went for her.

When Cooper hit her with a question she should have seen coming from a mile away – is Trump’s idea of a border wall actually “stupid,” as she had initially called it? – she panicked immediately and rambled about Trump until Cooper interjected to get her back on track. As an open borders enthusiast who plans to give citizenship to millions of illegals in the country, she had the nerve to say that there needs to be a legal process for immigration and that she will secure the border. Cooper flustered her further by pressing: “So you don’t think the idea of a border wall is stupid anymore?” and she responded again by attacking Trump and complaining that “he didn’t do much of anything” with the wall.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

It’s unhinged to compare Trump to Hitler This fear-mongering campaign will only turn more voters off the Democrats. Jenny Holland

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/24/its-unhinged-to-compare-trump-to-hitler/

It was the October surprise that surprised no one. America’s political and media elites have this week alleged that Donald Trump is just like Adolf Hitler. This might be a little more shocking if they hadn’t been claiming exactly this for the best part of eight years.

The prompt for the latest round of hysterical Trump-Nazi comparisons came from John Kelly, a former Trump chief of staff turned Trump-hater. In an interview with the New York Times, Kelly claimed that his former boss spoke wistfully of Hitler and said he wished that he had Hitler’s generals. Kelly is certain that Trump meets the ‘definition of a fascist’, having found a general definition online.

Trump’s campaign adamantly refutes Kelly’s claims. But vice-president Kamala Harris, Trump’s increasingly desperate presidential rival, has predictably seized on Kelly’s comments. She took time out from her busy schedule of preparing truly terrible answers for her CNN Town Hall yesterday, to stand in front of a podium with the presidential seal on it and denounce Trump as ‘a fascist’ who wants ‘unchecked’ power. Citing Kelly’s claims, she said that Trump wants ‘a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the constitution of the United States’.

It seems the empty ‘joyous’ vibe that initially characterised Harris’s campaign has now given way to dystopian fear-mongering about the return of fascism. Harris is now reviving the core message of Joe Biden’s campaign – that Trump poses an existential, fascist-like threat to American democracy. It’s desperate stuff.

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The Biden Iran Scandal Gets Worse

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/10/the-biden-iran-scandal-gets-worse/

The source of last week’s leak of U.S. intelligence about Israel’s plans to strike Iran, which has occasioned an investigation, isn’t yet known. What should be obvious, though, is that no individual who has had extensive contact with Iranian intelligence and diplomatic officials, and who has deferred to the direction of those officials before, should have ever been put in a sensitive position in the first place.

The Biden administration has ignored this rather simple rule.

The most glaring example of its questionable handling of the Iran portfolio is Biden Iran envoy Robert Malley’s continued employment by the State Department amid a probe into his handling of classified materials and the possibility that he shared information with the regime. Though Malley has since been suspended, it’s noteworthy that the administration has opted to technically keep him in the role, no doubt wishing to avoid the political fallout that would come with terminating him.

Possibly worse than Malley’s appointment is that of Ariane Tabatabai, an academic turned State Department and Pentagon official. She was part of the now-infamous Iran Experts Initiative — a program used by Tehran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to cultivate relationships with foreign academics who could carry water for the regime.

At one point, according to reporting from Semafor, which revealed the program’s existence, Tabatabai opted to skip a conference in Israel after an Iranian official instructed her not to go. She also consulted with this same Iranian official regarding how she should testify in hearings before Congress. Her job today — chief of staff to the Pentagon official who oversees special operations.

It’s true that the leak of documents from the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency could have come from any number of places. According to a former official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon last week, they appear to have been available to “thousands upon thousands” of U.S. officials via a classified system.

But it’s also true that since October 7, pro-Hamas ideologues within the State Department have labored to leak information that would help their cause and damage Israel’s war effort.

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Canada to ‘Significantly Reduce’ Immigration as Trudeau Caves to Public Pressure: Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/canada-to-significantly-reduce-immigration-as-trudeau-caves-to-public-pressure/

Canada plans to “significantly reduce” the number of immigrants it allows into the country over the next two years, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reverses course amid falling public support for immigration.

Canada previously set a target of 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025. Under the new immigration plan, Canada will decrease that target by 21 percent, to 395,000. After 2025, the limit will shrink by roughly 4 percent each year as the government looks to set a target of 365,000 new permanent residents by 2027.

And for the first time ever, Canada will set a target for temporary immigrants. The new limitations, which will impact international students and foreign workers, will see admittance of non-permanent residents drop by roughly 445,000 in 2025 and 2026. By comparison, the country allowed in 800,000 temporary immigrants in 2023.

“This is temporary — to pause our population growth and let our economy catch up,” Trudeau said Thursday. “We have to get the system working right for all Canadians.”

The prime minister said during a news conference that the new plan is being put into place because the country “didn’t get the balance quite right” as it responded to the “tumultuous times” that followed the Covid-19 pandemic.

The new policy marks an about-face from Trudeau’s previous support for immigration that had allowed for a record increase of immigration to the country since he took office in 2015. Trudeau’s government raised annual permanent resident targets from 272,000 when he took office to 485,000 this year.

Immigration has driven 97 percent of the country’s population growth as it contends with worsened housing shortages, inflated rent prices, strained public services and rising unemployment. The country’s unemployment rate is particularly high among young people — 14 percent compared to 6.5 percent unemployment overall.

Fifty-eight percent of Canadians now feel that immigration levels are too high, according to a poll by the Environics Institute, which found public opinion on immigration levels has “effectively flipped from being acceptable (if not valuable) to problematic”.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Harris Finally Crashes and Burns on CNN by Jeff Blehar

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/10/harris-finally-crashes-and-burns-on-cnn/

Even CNN’s own analysts panned the Democratic nominee’s performance. This was her first authentic campaign disaster.

The engines have flared out right at the end of the flight. The tank is out of gas. The weather is choppy, the navigation system completely unreliable, and the best guess is that you’re still short of the runway. (Oh, and the captain had a stroke while in the cockpit a few hours ago, leaving only a flight attendant as the pilot. She refuses to read the instruction manual or listen to the passengers.) Yes, it’s easy enough to spin up lovingly bespoke metaphors for how the Harris campaign is handling the late stages of the 2024 race — a race they very much could still win, I must always emphasize — but I’ll conclude this one by saying that if last night’s Kamala Harris CNN town hall (with Anderson Cooper hosting in the Philadelphia suburbs) is any indication, the plane may already be disintegrating in midair, before it even hits the ground.

You may have noticed that I’ve had a decidedly muted reaction to Harris’s other recent “serious” media interviews, whether Bret Baier at Fox News or Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes, in the sense that while Harris was predictably awful in both sit-downs (almost relentlessly so), she was boring and unrevelatory in her awfulness. In other words, we learned nothing new about the depths to which she is capable of sinking performatively that we didn’t already know. They were water-treading exercises for the most part.

Last night’s CNN town hall, on the other hand, was memorably bad. This is the moment her campaign dreaded, the moment when the fundamental emptiness and inadequacy of their candidate was revealed for all the world to see without helpful edits or someone to bail her out. There Harris stood exposed — with an unpersuaded audience and a moderator in Cooper who handled his task without showing any particular solicitude for her electoral fortunes — and she withered in the spotlight. (As Dylan might have said, “Even the vice president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”) There are moments from this event — many moments, oh so terribly many of them — that will haunt Harris in retirement forever should she lose, the sorts of ghastly stammering failures destined to go into YouTube clip reels ten years later explaining “How We Got Here.” (And if she wins? All is not forgiven, merely set aside — until the reality of her as president for four years takes its toll on Democratic fortunes, which will be quickly.)

As for myself, I found Harris’s answer to Anderson Cooper’s pointed question about the border fence to be perhaps the lowest moment of her entire public career to date, and I mean that in the specific sense that nobody who watches it — not even her fiercest partisans — will be able to come away from it with anything save a reflex-level revulsion. (For her friends, the reaction will be shame and desire to change the subject. For her enemies, it will be glee. For the vast majority of normal voters, it will simply be: “DO NOT WANT.”)

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Hierarchy of Democratic Deceit by Stephen Hayward

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/10/the-hierarchy-of-democratic-deceit.php

It is a well-known pattern going back decades now that Democratic candidates conceal their leftist views from the voters, running as moderates, and sometimes, like Democratic Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania right now, practically denying they are even Democrats! We’ve seen how Kamala Harris has disavowed her previous far-left issue statements wholesale, while winking to the progressive base that “my values haven’t changed.”

I’m not sure it is working. Last weekend when driving around Berkeley, where there are always a ton of lawn signs ahead of an election, I noted how few Harris-Walz signs there were. If you delve into left-wing social media, you find out very quickly that a lot of progressives are furious with Harris for moving to the middle and abandoning her previous positions. The Bernie-swills are convinced that this is why she is slipping! For example:

One of the issues most conspicuously missing from the Harris campaign is climate change, which we are told is the greatest existential crisis facing humanity evah! If they really believe this, don’t you think they’d be talking about it more? Of course, as we reported back in June, there is solid survey evidence, from Democratic pollsters, that talking about electric cars actually reduced support for Joe Biden. (And now several Democratic candidates are saying “What electric car mandate? Never heard of it. . .” Even though their votes are on the record.)

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump’s Media Haters Still Don’t Get It Martin Kaufmann

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/25/trumps-media-haters-still-dont-get-it/

Editor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the author. To read the entire article, click here.

This is an actual headline that appeared in a “journalism” newsletter 13 days before the election: “How much coverage of Donald Trump is too much?”

The column is from Tom Jones, senior media writer at the Poynter Institute and, you’ll not be surprised to learn, a man consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome. I’ve said in the past that Jones’ daily “Poynter Report” column would be more accurately titled, “Why I Hate Donald Trump and Fox News.” (For what it’s worth, Jones would dispute this. In 2020, I sent him an email pointing out glaring biases evident in his commentary. He responded, among other things, by writing, “I can promise you that I don’t have an agenda other than to point out really good journalism and call out shoddy journalism.” Self-awareness apparently isn’t his strong suit.)

These days I only occasionally read Jones’ tedious, predictable commentaries, and only then for the same reason that a child pinches himself: to see how much pain I can endure.

In this instance, Jones claims to be upset that the legacy media has devoted so much time to Trump trolling Kamala Harris in a McDonald’s photo op and his outrageous asides, most notably ruminating on the late Arnold Palmer’s junk.

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Iran’s Assassination Program in Europe: Europe Goes Back to Sleep by Robert Williams

Posted By on October 24th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21041/iran-assassinations-europe

“In order to maintain a degree of separation from the terror cells it operates in Europe and to ensure plausible deniability, there is no direct contact between Tehran and members of the cells. In the case of the recently detained French cell, instructions on where and when to carry out attacks were relayed via international networks of criminals and drug smugglers.” — Daniel Dolev, Israeli investigative journalist, shomrim.news, September 5, 2024.

In addition to the Iranian dissidents that it has been hunting for years, the Iranian regime now literally hunts Jews in Europe.

Iran, in other words, has extended its operations from having terrorists as proxies to having criminals as proxies.

According to Britain’s MI5, the situation is about to get much worse….

Despite all this clear knowledge… the leadership of the European Union and the UK refuse to designate the IRGC a terrorist organization. Instead, European countries target Israel with arms boycotts, constant condemnation and general opprobrium, although Israel’s fight against Iran belongs at least as much to Europe and the West, no matter how hard — out of dread — they might try to deny it.

If they think that pressuring Israel not to confront this existential threat will make it disappear, they are sadly mistaken. As in World War II, it is by supporting Israel in defeating aggression that they will stop it.

Last year, by an overwhelming majority, the European Parliament passed a resolution to that effect, but the EU nevertheless refused to designate the IRGC as such. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell claimed there were legal obstacles, however, that claim has been refuted as a lie.

After Iran’s direct missile attack on Israel on April 13, the European Parliament again, by an overwhelming majority, adopted a resolution to designate the IRGC a terrorist organization…. It also requested that the EU add Hezbollah to the terror list. Borrell, once more, simply refused, arguing that “listing this organisation as a ‘terrorist organisation’ would have no practical effect.”

Designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization would make it possible to press terrorism charges and prosecute both members of the organization and those supporting it. It seems as if the majority of European leaders are once again determined, as in appeasing Churchill’s crocodile, to be “eaten last.”

“Putting IRGC on the EU terror list is an important step to protect the national security, to protect our communities, particularly the Iranian diaspora and the Jewish community because there is a genuine terror threat and because they are not only targeting and conducting terror plots but they are also nurturing homegrown Shia islamist radicalisation, using the Isis and Al Qaeda methods. However, because IRGC is not proscribed (as a terror group), these activities are not outlawed.” — Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran, eureporter.co, May 6, 2024.

Are European politicians really that eager for the votes of their unassimilable newcomers — who appear to be planning to take over Europe? Or are Europe’s politicians afraid that if they fail to delegitimize Israel at every opportunity, the newcomers might inflict even more terrorism on European soil? Does Europe really want to live in a state of being permanently extorted? The price goes only one way: up.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard Joins Republican Party, ‘The Party of Common Sense’ David Zimmerman

Posted By on October 24th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-joins-republican-party-the-party-of-common-sense/

Tulsi Gabbard announced Tuesday night she is officially joining the Republican Party as she continues stumping for former president Donald Trump on the campaign trail two weeks out from the November election.

Gabbard left the Democratic Party to become an independent in October 2022 and endorsed Trump in August after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also a Democrat-turned-independent, ended his longshot presidential campaign and threw his support behind the GOP nominee.

“It is because of my love for our country and specifically because of the leadership that President Trump has brought to transform the Republican Party,” Gabbard said at a rally in Greensboro, N.C., “that I’m proud to stand here with you today, President Trump, and announce that I’m joining the Republican Party.”

The move seemed to surprise Trump as he appeared on stage. After her speech, Trump said he “didn’t know” Gabbard had decided to join the Republican Party.

“I’m joining the party of the people, the party of equality, the party that was founded to fight against and end slavery in this country,” she said in explaining her decision. “It is the party of common sense and the party that is led by a president who has the courage and strength to fight for peace.”

In her leadup to the big announcement, Gabbard slammed her former party and Vice President Kamala Harris for being “anti-freedom,” “pro-censorship,” “pro-open borders,” and “pro-war.” She also criticized Harris for “shamelessly” accepting endorsements from “warmongers” like Dick and Liz Cheney, reiterating that a second Trump presidency represents peace. Trump has vowed to end the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza.